The NBA came down hard on the Clippers in the Kawhi Leonard case. The league found the LA team guilty of illegally circumventing the salary cap to acquire the veteran forward in 2022.
As a result, it decided to strip the team of five first-round draft picks from 2029 through 2033, while also imposing a $30 million fine on the Clippers and a one-year ban from arenas and all team activities on the team’s owner, Steve Ballmer.
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Chief Operating Officer Gillian Zucker has been placed on unpaid leave for one year, while President of Basketball Operations, Lawrence Frank, has been suspended without pay for six months.
As for Leonard, he must pay the NBA $700,000, but he will face no further consequences and will be able to play normally for the Raptors.
After a months-long investigation, it was determined that the Clippers paid Leonard through a $28 million deal, which he signed in 2022 with the now-bankrupt “green” banking services company Aspiration, which also had a 23-year, $300 million agreement with the Clippers. These allegations were first made public by former ESPN contributor Pablo Torre in a series of podcasts last September.
*photo source: AP
